In almost every hockey movie that’s ever been made, you see a moment – in a flashback, or just to start off the motion picture – where there’s a young kid alone, on a frozen pond, simply skating in the atmosphere, developing his love for and skill at the game of hockey. It’s not necessarily like that though, especially in the United States. Often, the path to NHL superstardom for the American youngster is paved through 5AM practices on weekend mornings, parents driving kids sometimes miles away to get a chance to play and achieve their dream of playing professional hockey.

This is the sort of grassroots love and devotion that makes up the American hockey lover the NHL and NBC want to celebrate on it’s first annual Hockey Day in America, which will be launched on the network live from Chicago’s Milennium Park on Sunday at Noon ET, and carry through until the end up the Heritage Classic on VERSUS. NBC Sports/VERSUS Executive producer wants to take time out to, as he puts it “celebrate hockey and to make sure that all those parents who get up at five in the morning, get to understand that they’re part of an incredibly strong nation, a hockey nation.” Flood, a self-described “rink rat” who played the sport in college, knows how great the game is and wants to use this sort of devotion to drive “making it a bigger sport in this country and a bigger part of our society.”